Ten Days in the Hills (17 page)

Zoe didn’t know quite what to make of this remark, so she said, “Does she realize how you feel about the war?”

“She didn’t ask. And I told you, dear one, that I don’t have a feeling about the war, at least a for or against feeling. What she says is interesting, what you say is interesting, what Saddam Hussein says is interesting, what George W. Bush says is interesting. The more dramatic any situation is, the more people reveal themselves. I don’t think that’s a ‘cold’ point of view, as you say. But, whatever, it’s my point of view.”

“I know that. I was just asking a question.” She knew she sounded defensive, but still they pressed close, and she felt her whole body relax and open up in a tingly sort of way. He began kissing her, which was very nice, too, beard and all. She had not thought his beard very appealing at first, but now it was delightful, a part of him and therefore sexy and alluring. She felt his body charge up slightly with intention, and then hers did the same. They kept kissing, tongues, lips. He sucked her tongue into his mouth and she felt as though she were fucking him, in-out, in-out. She pressed him onto his back, and crawled over him, not in any way mitigating the kissing, but intensifying the kissing. She could feel against her stomach that his prick was hard, and she thought the word “throbbing,” which was a common and lovely word having to do with erections. She had never actually felt one throb, but she thought the word “throbbing” anyway, and then felt a certain throbbing, but it was their hearts—her heart in her chest against his heart in his chest. Then he introduced his hand between them, and reached for her pubic area. She felt his fingers in her pubic hair.

She pulled away from the kiss for just a moment and said, “You’re stroking it the wrong way.”

“I’m sorry, what way would you like me to stroke it?”

“I mean, the wrong direction. You need to go down rather than up.” She kissed him, but it was a compensatory kiss, not a passion kiss. She said, “You need to stroke with the growth pattern. Otherwise it’s irritating.”

“Pubic hair doesn’t have a growth pattern, dear one.”

“Mine does.”

“Why is this the first I’ve heard of it?”

“I don’t know. It came up before, but I didn’t mention it.”

He sat up and pushed back the covers. They both looked at his crotch, but it was too dark to see anything other than his half-detumescent prick listing toward her. He said, “Turn on the light.”

She said, “Why are we doing this?”

“Doing what?”

“Looking at our pubic hair. We were making love.”

“I want to see.”

“I want to fuck!”

Three seconds went by. She said, “Okay,” and turned on the light. Since the light was on her side, he squirmed over toward her so that it could shine equally on his pubic hair and hers. His rose like foam around his member, blondish-gray and curly. Then they looked at hers. Hers lay flat, and, compared with his, most of the individual hairs were oddly straight. They turned this way and that. He said, “Hmm. They look more like eyebrow hair than chest hair. It’s funny how pubic hair never looks like the hair on your head. Hmm.” He touched her pubis with an index finger. She said, “See? There’s a growth pattern. There’s almost a cowlick.” She tried to sound mildly interested, but really she was getting quite annoyed. If she had known what a simple statement of preference—down, not up—was going to lead to, she would have kept her mouth shut.

“I never noticed that before.” He put his head down for a good look, careful not to block the light. “I’m amazed.”

“Why are you amazed?”

“I don’t know. It’s just interesting, and not something I’ve seen before.”

It was here that she made her second mistake. She said, “I would appreciate it if you would not refer to all the women you have, ah,
fucked
over the years.”

That got him. It was so hard to get him, and that did it. For a very short split second, Zoe quailed.

He lifted his head and looked at her, first in surprise and then, just for a second, in distaste. The distaste passed almost instantly into his usual look of benign concern, but she saw it, and it made her jump away from him. Yes, she should have waited three seconds. On the surface, three seconds didn’t seem like a very long time, though long enough, she understood from articles on cosmology, for the universe to form itself out of nothing. But she couldn’t wait three seconds. She exclaimed, “Fine, that’s enough. Do what you want. You always do.” She threw herself into an elaborate fuck-me sprawl, and slightly lifted her hips to offer her “eyebrow hairs” for his consideration. He sat up and looked down at her, his fingers in his beard, neither cold nor angry. He knew better than to say anything. Still the three seconds! She pursed her lips shut so that she wouldn’t back down. Finally, he said, “It seems to me that you have a pattern of losing your temper when I have sessions with Marcelle Vivier in your presence. Does that seem to be the case to you?”

“Oh, pattern this, pattern that. I don’t think in that way. That woman needs to get over it.”

“Get over what?”

“Whatever it is that keeps her calling you from France once a week.”

“She feels that she is getting something from our work. When she no longer feels that way, I’m sure she’ll stop.”

“What about you? What are you getting from it?”

“Well, it is my job. And I do think it’s interesting. I do think she’s interesting. I’m learning from our sessions.”

“That’s what you always say! Marcelle is interesting! My pubic hair is interesting! George Bush is interesting! What’s the difference?”

“Well, there isn’t much, really. Probably my feelings about all three of those things are essentially the same.”

“Don’t you think that’s weird? Don’t you think that anyone in the world would hear what you just said and think that you were very weird?” Her voice was rising. She knew her voice was rising and she knew he knew her voice was rising, which was yet another point against her, wasn’t it? She rolled over in disgust, turning her back on him. In the end, it was always the same with men. Even the enlightened ones took refuge in not saying anything. She closed her eyes, though obviously she was not going to sleep. What she was going to do was lie there all night, churning with indignation, and then she was going to have to get up in the morning and deal with Isabel for one and her mother for another and that woman Elena and her kid for a third, though the kid was good-looking and seemed nice, and he didn’t give his mother nearly the hard time Isabel gave her. It was much worse to have a supposedly good kid, who did all the right things, but was angry at you all the time, than it was to have a kid who was sometimes a fuckup but who liked you. What was it Simon had done? Zoe had seen him before dinner, when everyone was cooking, put his arm around Elena and laugh and give her a nice kiss, and not as if he never did that sort of thing and now he was handing it to her on a platter just this once, was she satisfied now, but as if he was used to showing his mom affection. It never occurred to Isabel to suck up. Probably she would rather die than suck up to Zoe. It was a very bad and inflexible attitude, and came straight from Delphine as far as Zoe was concerned.

“Zoe?” said Paul.

“I’m sleeping.”

“Are you?”

“No, but I’m thinking about Isabel and my mother.”

“What are you thinking?”

“Why do you want to know? Because it’s interesting?”

“It is interesting. But, of course, it’s interesting to the same degree as anything else is interesting, no more, no less.” But he said this as if he were suppressing a laugh.

She sat up and said, “No, it’s more interesting.” But now she was suppressing a laugh. Because it really wasn’t more interesting, it was just the same old mother thing. She thought she could rise to the challenge, though. She cleared her throat. She said, “Okay, it’s not interesting, I admit that. But it’s no less interesting than Marcelle Vivier’s opinions about Iraq, and you spent an hour—”

“Fifty minutes.”

“Fifty minutes on those, so—”

“Is this a session?”

“It could be.”

“Is it one of your weekly sessions?”

She thought for a moment, then said, “No. May I have an extra session? A half-session?”

“Gratis?”

Now she waited three seconds. She counted them internally. She thought this was a question for him to decide without her urging. After three seconds, he said, “Okay, informal session. Gratis. But only because I’m tired and I’m not sure if I can help you.”

She nodded, paused a moment, then began in a more formal tone. “You know, I was terrified of Isabel after she was born. I was sure I was going to make a mistake that would kill her. I even had this dream right before she was born that I went to the grocery store with her, and just happened to put her in the sack before the bagger put the groceries in, and then he put everything in on top of her, and I didn’t realize it until I got home, by which time I was really in trouble, you know what I mean? Not to mention that she was in trouble, of course.” She cleared her throat. In a session, everything you said, every word you used, was revealing. She glanced at him, but he looked authentically neutral. “The dream didn’t even go all the way to unpacking her, just to staring at the bag on the counter, wondering if she was okay. And then, one night when she was only six weeks old, I woke up and saw her in her crib, which was in our room, and the blanket had fallen over her face. I remember thinking, Oh my God, she can’t even push a blanket out of her face! I was already wondering what I would say to my mom and Max if she died. She was premature—that was a crisis in itself.

“Whenever she cried or fussed, I knew I was doing a poor job. I used to balance Isabel on her side with blankets rolled against her back and her front so she couldn’t fall in either direction, and I would spend ages adjusting those blankets so that if there was throw-up it wouldn’t get on the blanket roll in front and be reaspirated or somehow forced back into her mouth, and the one against her back had to be just the right size or she would either roll forward onto her stomach, which I considered to be instantly fatal, or roll onto her back, which would take longer but have the same ultimate result. Every time she cried or fussed, I knew she was blaming me.”

“You felt she was blaming you.”

“Well, yeah.” But after a moment, she recognized the difference between “knew” and “felt.”

“My mother was quick. You don’t see it so much now; she’s pretty stiff. But back then, she was, what, around fifty. She didn’t have to think. There was the baby, the baby needed something, my mother was on it before the thought hardly crossed my mind. And Max. Max had his opinions, too. And his mother came out from the East, and Dorothy was always in and out, being helpful. When should you introduce solid food? There was a question. I started solids at two weeks! said Delphine. Two months! said Max’s mother. Not until she reaches for it on her own! said Dorothy. Five months! said one book. What seems natural to you? said the doctor. Talk talk talk. Everything about how to treat Isabel was a topic of conversation that had to be exhausted over and over again. I mean, it’s not like everyone fought—everyone was very nice—but I was only nineteen, and I’d never even held a baby before Isabel. I don’t know.” She cleared her throat and fell silent. The silk strap of her chemise had slipped down over her shoulder. She didn’t push it up.

Paul gazed at her in a kind of distant way, contemplating, pooching out his lips inside his beard, then pulling his beard idly for a moment. Finally, he said, “Well, it wasn’t about the baby.”

“What?”

“That whole thing, it wasn’t about the baby.”

“It sure seemed like it was about the baby. The baby was everything!”

“But of course it was about—” He waited for her to fill in this blank.

“It was about me. I know everything is about me in the end, because I am projecting my entire world and constructing it and creating it, but, you know, I didn’t know you then, and I hadn’t thought about things in that way, and it sure seemed like we had this baby and there was absolutely no agreement on how to take care of her, and so—”

“And so?”

“And so—” But her mind had stopped working, so she looked at him.

He closed his eyes. This was a sign either that he was receiving something from on high, or abroad, or out there, or within, or that he was making something up. In the quiet, she could hear the hum of the dehumidifier. Outside the sliding glass door, she could see the garden lit up by the moon. He said, “Did you know you were once a god?”

“A what?”

“A god.”

Yes, she was startled. She said, “My mother will be interested to hear that.”

“Do you know where Oaxaca is?”

“You mean, in Mexico?”

“Yes. It’s a very holy site. There’s a huge complex called Monte Albán that’s only partially been excavated, though when you were the god of thunder it was quite different. Beautiful buildings with wonderful carvings and luxuries of all sorts, though of course you and your fellow gods and goddesses were extremely cruel to the human population. Lots of blood sacrifices and ritual disembowelments.”

“Maybe we didn’t know any better.”

“Maybe as gods you didn’t recognize a problem, and saw the human population passing from one shape to another, and were just interested or amused by it, since from an immortal perspective you didn’t recognize death as death.”

“Maybe that,” said Zoe.

“At any rate, you were the god of thunder, which I take to mean that you controlled the weather in some way, certainly the rainfall and the extent and violence of the storms and the length of the rainy season, and therefore the growth of the crops and the overall prosperity of the community. You were very powerful. Only the sun god was more powerful, and the goddess of the earth, who controlled earthquakes, was as powerful as you were, but somewhat more feared, as you can imagine.”

“Oh, sure,” said Zoe, “that stands to reason.”

“You did a terrible job.”

“Oh,” said Zoe.

“Some people wanted one thing and some people wanted another, and they would pray to you and sacrifice to you to get what they wanted. They were always upping the ante. If one farmer sacrificed his old mother to you, then the farmer next door would sacrifice his third wife.”